To take advantage of opportunities/solve problems, the need for a greater than local/cross-boundary approach can be seen. Regional cooperation is the nominal tool, yet the goal is to be greater; have greater capacity, resources, market,…. Greater is regional; working across boundaries achieves it. Cooperation is possible when people recognize such regional community. This is regional intelligence: Greater Communities solving problems, of which security is foremost; altogether “community motive.”

Economic development is complicated. Take, for example, the concept of regionalism. Nearly everyone agrees that cities and counties are best situated to compete in the global economy when they collaborate to improve the region as a whole.

After all, city and county boundaries are arbitrary lines on a map, whereas a regional economy is an organic thing. It expands here and there, it creates and severs linkages, and it moves workers and products from place to place. It's misleading to talk about the Greensboro economy, because Greensboro is an integral part of a Triad economy.

And yet regional cooperation is tough. In the Triad, the three major cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point often seem to be playing a game of tug-of-war as they test the limits of their usually cordial relationships. As many of us recall, regionalism was tossed out the window in 2004 (more energetically by some cities than by others) when the new Dell factory was the prize. And last year, High Point surprised even cynical observers when it granted incentives to La-Z-Boy to move its regional headquarters from Greensboro to a site just five miles away within the High Point city limits.

I recently attended a speech on regionalism by a nationally regarded economic-development consultant. He described regionalism's benefits and gave a few examples of how it had worked in various places. But then he noted that most of his examples came from regions anchored by a single major city. He said that regionalism is a tougher nut to crack in regions where no one city dominates. Unfortunately, that's a fair description of the Triad.

Don't get me wrong. Regionalism is far from dead in the Triad. The Heart of the Triad initiative is designed to ...

What kind of metro area do we want Atlanta to be 50 years from now, and what can we do to help turn that urban image into a reality?

The Atlanta Regional Commission has just launched a two-year effort to answer those questions by bringing in futurists and visionaries to help us design our future metropolis.

The first futurist — Glen Hiemstra of Futurist.com — spoke at last week's State of the Region breakfast, sharing his views of how metro Atlanta should look in 2057.

Hiemstra's vision was three-pronged.

First, metro Atlanta should become a "green leader."

Communities should become more sustainable by becoming more water- and energy-efficient. Investments should be made in high speed rail connecting cities throughout the Southeast and developing communities that can be served with transit.

"Set a goal to be as carbon-free as you can be, " Hiemstra told the 1, 000 leaders at the breakfast.

He called the second vision for metro Atlanta: "techtopia."

"Be a true innovation leader in life sciences, nanotechnology or the next generation of energy technologies, " Hiemstra said. Given the amount of sun in the South, he recommended concentrating on solar energy technologies as well as biofuels. The presence of Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State and the other research universities gives metro Atlanta an edge with those technologies.

The third vision was "lifelong, livable communities."

Hiemstra, using ARC's numbers, said the Atlanta region will have twice as many elderly (people older than 65) in 2025 as it does today given the aging baby boomers.

Because most of the elderly prefer staying in their current homes, Hiemstra said the challenge will be to reinvent the transportation system so that there are more options. It also will mean "making our communities much more compact" so that people can walk …

The Richmond region needs an overarching vision for its future and the leaders to take it there, a consultant’s report commissioned by 40 business leaders says.

Consultant James A. Crupi presented the report today at a public meeting at VCU’s Siegel Center. The business leaders who paid him for his study hope it will spark community discussion and agreement on a path forward.

Crupi said:

Regional cooperation needs to be beefed up to deal with challenges ranging from transportation to development to workforce issues;

Schools, particularly the city of Richmond’s schools, need to be a focus of attention;

The concentration of poverty in the city is a major concern;

The area has made progress since his 1993, in relations between the races and its leaders’ understanding of the community’s needs;

The city of Richmond’s political leaders need to stop squabbling and start working together.

Crupi also proposed specific steps area leaders should take in the months head. They include:

A 2015 Metro Future Task force with a 12-month deadline to create a vision and plan for the region;

Halifax Regional Municipality by any other name would not be as sweet, city hall councillors decided Tuesday night.

Council voted 13-8 to reject a proposal from Coun. Bob Harvey (Lower Sackville) to change the three-word moniker to simply Halifax.

Central to that for some councillors was the $852, 000 cost to change signage and decals on the city-owned vehicles and properties.

Mr. Harvey said that after 11½ years on regional council, he wanted the name of the municipality to catch up with common practice, which is to refer to the capital region simply as Halifax.

He invited his colleagues to "journey with me on the road of political maturity."

But many councillors said going down that road would divide the municipal entity that was formed with the amalgamation of the former cities of Halifax and Dartmouth, the town of Bedford and Halifax County in 1996.

Coun. Jim Smith (Albro Lake-Harbourview) said the public should be consulted.

"If I asked to change the name to Dartmouth, I’m sure people on this side of the harbour would be up in arms, " he pointed out at city hall.

"There’s no point in spending one cent on this."

A few councillors said that Halifax needed better "branding" around the world with a one-word identity, but that wasn’t the case for Coun. Gloria McCluskey (Dartmouth Centre), who told council she never says she’s from Halifax.

Suburban commuters from Galveston to Conroe, along with Houston and Harris County residents, overwhelmingly support mass transit as the best solution to traffic problems, according to a new regional survey released Thursday.

The findings represent a challenge to leaders of suburban counties where transit service is scarce, said Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociology professor who directed the survey.

In an expanded version of the 2007 Houston Area Survey, almost 80 percent of residents throughout the region named public transportation as their first or second choice among three options for easing traffic congestion. The other choices were building bigger and better roads or developing communities where people live close to where they work and shop.

Klineberg said the broad support for mass transit — particularly in Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, where concerns about traffic were the highest in the region — was striking in light of Houston's car-dependent history.

"Virtually all of Houston was built by, for and about the automobile, " said Klineberg, who presented his findings Thursday to the Center for Houston's Future, a nonprofit group focused on strategic regional planning.

His survey, conducted annually since 1982, has previously been limited to Harris County. After this year's findings were released in March, Klineberg expanded his sample to include Galveston, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties.

Leaders of suburban counties who attended Thursday's presentation said they were surprised by the level of support for public transportation in their communities.

"In our own surveys, mass transit per se is not on the radar, " said Montgomery County Judge Alan Sadler, noting that a park-and-ride lot west of Conroe closed recently because of lack of use.

"We're getting mixed messages, " Sadler said.

Klineberg acknowledged that support for transit as an abstract concept might not equate to a willingness to give up one's own automobile. ...

..."If England's cities and counties enjoyed the powers of the Scottish parliament, as they did until the second half of the 20th century, they would offer Brown a home-grown answer to the 'West Lothian' conundrum. Scottish MPs would no longer be voting on England's health, education and social care policies because they would have been delegated to Cornwall, Yorkshire, Manchester and London."

... European local government works as part of a devolutionary model because most continental cities work with regional elected authorities. If Strasbourg or Cologne boast good transport and other infrastructure, these have often been achieved with additional backing and finance from the regional tier of government. Scotland and Wales now have a national but equivalent tier. Outside London, England lacks this important tool in planning and financing major projects. How do we begin to put this right?

Regionalists welcome the debate around governance prompted by Gordon Brown. The administrative element for change already exists in the eight current English regions. The creation of regional ministers and possibly regional select committees adds a further valuable focus - but only if regions are empowered to act rather than talk.

Lords reform offers a way forward. The election of second-chamber members by regional list systems with a dual mandate to sit as a regional council or executive board would answer the West Lothian question and give England powers akin to Scotland and Wales.

Jenkins' suggestion that the UK is on the road to disintegration is too pessimistic. Devolution presents opportunities to strengthen the union via a new constitutional settlement in which the English regions and UK nations are linked by a reformed Westminster parliament better reflecting British national and regional diversity.

Police are handcuffed in fighting gangs because they simply don't have enough information on the burgeoning number of criminal organizations, experts say.

There has been no comprehensive research done on gangs in B.C. in the past several years, even though academic experts acknowledge the gang landscape has changed dramatically since the 1990s -- the last time any research was undertaken.

"[In the 1980s and 1990s] there were more easily-identifiable, named groups and they were very much strutting their stuff in the manner of Hollywood movies, " said Robert Gordon, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University.

"But that's all collapsed. What has risen is a more amorphous set of groups which are focusing their activity in the illegal drug trade, " Gordon said yesterday.

Police now estimate there are more than 125 organized-crime groups in B.C.

Understanding the gang problem in terms of who is involved, what their numbers are, what activities they're involved in and why they joined is crucial to forming a comprehensive plan, experts say.

That was emphasized last week at the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police street-gang conference in Montreal. The CACP ended the conference by calling for a national strategy on street gangs that involves not just police enforcement but prevention and programs that enable members to leave gangs.

Meanwhile, Gordon is critical of Solicitor-General John Les for rejecting the idea of creating a regional police force, relying instead on cross-jurisdictional forces.

"Obviously, something is wrong with those integrated teams because they've been spectacularly unsuccessful in dealing with the illegal trade in drugs, which has been building in this province for a long time and which has been far from silent in dealing with their disputes, " said Gordon.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan and even some police officers have said a regional force is needed. …

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a modest proposal for you this evening. I propose that you ask Gov. [Eliot L.] Spitzer to make the Buffalo area a demonstration project for consolidation.”

Giambra cited the drive in the 1950s and 1960s for school district consolidation, noting, “With state focus and state leadership, consolidation happened, and we have an opportunity to make it happen again.”

He suggested that the state use the city and county fiscal control boards “as tools to achieve a firm new state policy on consolidation and government efficiency.”

Giambra pointed to the regional and metro governments in Ontario, where the economy is thriving, and to Ohio and Pennsylvania, where officials currently are wrestling with the consolidation question.

“We’ve seen it up close, ” he said. “We’ve seen it work. And we’ve seen economic progress occur right across the border. . . . Ontario did it, while we still talk about it.”

He ticked off the names of other cities that have seen success through consolidation — Louisville, Ky.; Augusta, Ga.; Jacksonville, Fla.

Giambra noted that Erie County, comprising 1, 000 square miles, has 1, 000 units of government and discourages growth because of high property taxes that feed duplicated government services.

“The solution is decisive state action on government consolidation and on land-use planning, ” he said. “Action is action. Inaction, unfortunately, is also action. I don’t think that we should be content with inaction.”

Giambra blamed inaction on “politicians who don’t want to give up what they’ve got” and state and local leaders who throw tax money at problems instead of making institutional changes.

Nick Bollman, a Capitol insider who preached the notion of regionalism to solve problems such as traffic congestion, water supply and global warming, has died after drowning in the swimming pool of his home at Key West, Fla. He was 61.

Local authorities have ruled the Oct. 27 death as accidental drowning pending toxicology reports.

Mr. Bollman was the founder of the California Center for Regional Leadership, a nonprofit organization that seeks to help and advise policymakers at the highest levels of state government to tackle regional problems.

Last year, he left the group to become a senior fellow at the Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions at Florida Atlantic University.

Born and raised in Oregon, Mr. Bollman attended Harvard, where he graduated in 1967. He served four years in the U.S. Navy, followed by a stint in the office of then-New York City Mayor Abe Beame.

In 1987, he moved to California, where he worked as a program officer for the James Irvine Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

During that time, he created and managed Irvine foundation's sustainable communities program, which attracted grants totaling $38 million. Also during that period, he helped fund regional organizations such as the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network.

In 2000, he founded the California Center for Regional Leadership, which is based in San Francisco, and became acquainted with lawmakers and the governor's office. He served as technical adviser to the California Economic Strategy Panel as well as for the California Workforce Investment Board and the Governor's Commission on Building for the 21st Century.

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office in Sacramento in 2003, Mr. Bollman was enlisted to organize a series of meetings around the state for the governor's Cabinet members, local officials and civic leaders, …

10. U.S. regional communities - sub-State, State or multi-State -in news articles. Highlighted words are Google search terms. In this and the following section, links to websites of organizations are added to the news excerpt when this is the first time an organization has been found. A goal of this newsletter is to find every regional council in the U.S. in a news story. In most cases, where a full name is present a Google search will quickly get one to that organization.

.10Baltimore going forwardBaltimore Sun - United StatesRegionalism has been a talking point in business and political roundtables for decades. But that's just it: People only talked about it. ...

.11Mass Transit Helps States' Green RankingsHartford Courant - United StatesBut the tri-state region is catching up. The three states are participating in a regional pact that sets carbon emission levels and a trading system for the ...

.14Massachusetts makeover...Boston Globe - United StatesBut the Metropolitan Area Planning Council's MetroFuture project has identified other threats that will emerge if present trends continue: strains on water ...

"To understand the relationship among the systems of the region, how its parts fit together, and how we can position Northwest Indiana in the global transportation and logistics marketplace is why we have invited Michael Gallis to Northwest Indiana, " Galbiati said.

.17Council of governments to receive $220000News Journal - Longview, TX, USAThe East Texas Council of Governments got about $30000 more from the state for its police training program than it received a year ago. ...

.18Slow Growth Seen for Rural RegionsHouston Chronicle - United StatesA survey of rural bankers in nine Midwestern and Plains states suggests the region will see slow economic growth in the coming months. ...

.19Washington voted into regional commissionRappahannock News - Washington, VA, USAThe Town of Washington on Oct. 24 gained membership to the Rappahannock-Rapidan Regional Commission, an association of counties and towns in the region that ...

.20I-285 bridge symbolizes cooperation, growthAtlanta Journal Constitution - GA, USAThe new bridge that's about to open over the northern portion of I-285 is anything but a typical road improvement. ... The Perimeter area is a major economic engine for the region and state. …

.22PUBLIC SCHOOL REGIONALIZATION.Tapped - Washington, DC, USA… Hartford mayor Eddie Perez, who argued for regionalization in the Courant yesterday: We should create a Hartford County School District that includes all 29 towns in the county. ...

.23Perfect Storm For RegionalismWKBW-TV - Buffalo, NY, USAHe wants a new Buffalo and Erie County with 1 school district and regionalized services. "The City boundaries would be expanded to incorporate the entire ...

.24Bills gain 1st approval for Toronto gameWashington Business Journal - Washington, DC, USAIn their only statement on the request, the Bills said they "are looking to increase their successful regionalization efforts, " and, "in 2008, ...

.27GHSA to realign regions in 2008Northeast Georgian - Cornelia, GA, USA... the GHSA's reclassification committee will meet to place all member schools in regions. Once the regions are set, schools have until Dec. 14 to file a written appeal to be placed in a different region....

11. Other in the news: Highlighted words are Google search terms.

.10Trust elusive in regional communityNation Multimedia - Bangkok, Thailand... continue to negate the potential emergence of a fully-fledged "community". To build more trust in the region both policy-makers and the media need to ...

.1310 destinations for 2008 to be announced at WTMBoarding-no - Stavanger, Rogaland, NorwayThe response to our regional-level honours scheme has been phenomenal, and we have undoubtedly generated a lot more excitement and interest. ...

.18PartSource Ramps-up Regional WarehousingAuto Service World - Toronto, Canada"Each hub will be able to warehouse regionally catered products to best serve that market, " he says. "We'll be able to conduct some regionally based ...

.20Council develpment record shatteredTamworth Northern Daily Leader - Tamworth, New South Wales, AustraliaMr Inglis said while the growth was being tracked by TRC analysts û the council was also building on a regional development "roadmap" for the next 20 years ...

.21A View from the City: Growth and ChallengesBy Sherry Linkon(Sherry Linkon) Another key issue in economic development is regionalization, and that presents challenges related to race. If we want to create more regional networks, of any kind, we will have to face up to the realities of segregation and racism. ...

.22Building nations in our regionThe Australian - Sydney, AustraliaBut there is also no escaping the reality that both these countries - and others in our immediate region - remain very unstable. ...

Between 1995 and 2000, around 206 million migrants per year moved from less developed to more developed regions. More than one-half of these settled in the United States and Canada. This article is excerpted from the Population ...

The focus of these efforts has primarily been to measure the impact of human development on the environment and to provide data for the management of human settlement and expansion in the region....

12. Blogs: Highlighted words are Google search terms.

.10Celebrate 40 years of RegionalismBy George Jackson Demand Regionalism! Find out who your regional organization is. Is it a Council of Governments? Is it a Metropolitan Planning Organization? Is it both? And particpate in the regional community. Cities and counties, towns and townships ...

.11ARC wants your ideas for metro Atlanta's futureBy ACE The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has been around for 60 years, yet we still have some of the worse traffic, air quality, and water shortage problems of any 5 million person area in the country. Hopefully, we'll do a better job ...

.12Mandating regional cooperationBy SamH The obstacles to regional cooperation include a distrust of regional initiatives, a desire for local autonomy and a focus on the tangible (if short-run) benefits of going it alone. As long as communities have their own tax bases, ...

.14Regional unity is vital to area's redevelopmentBy QLC Tim Sanders is executive director of the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority. The opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not necessarily that of The Times.

.15Foreclosing the regionBy Bill Callahan There's one front-page issue on which the immediate self-interests of cities throughout Cuyahoga County ... the issue is subprime mortgage foreclosures. ... So why isn’t the foreclosure crisis high on the “regional agenda”…

(Crupi, 1992). And that's exactly where Richmond remains, though I have little doubt that Crupi will observe at least a bit of progress when he reports out tomorrow. The First Conversation The region's power class -- corporate leaders, ...

.17Regionalism's Batting AveragesBy Jon Baliles(Jon Baliles) The Richmond Regional Planning District Commission is an idea I noted this summer was past its time. Way past. It is time to come up with a new regional body with new blood and new ideas. The current incarnation is not getting much done ...

.18When is a region not a region?By SIMON WOODS Yet the Australians, or at least those in charge of the wine industry, seem hell-bent on pursuing regionality, even though most of the wines are marked more by winemaking than region. Further proof of this was provided by a tasting of ...

.19 [eu monster] common purpose strikes backBy Randy Higham(Randy Higham) Who defines a region? Well it isn’t us. HMG in its White Paper ‘Your Region Your Choice’ says ‘that it is not necessary for a region to have a strong historic identity to create a modern one, ’...

.20Core CitiesBy Matt Dean(Matt Dean) As well as expecting authorities to work together at a sub-regional level, she also sees an extended role for Regional Development Agencies with their key role again being to facilitate economic growth. She stressed that greater ...

.21Today's NotesBy Chris I recently read a fascinating history of the design moves behind the Tennessee Valley Authority--the most massive regional development effort in American history, by the way--and wrote a review that may be of interest. ...

.22Not on your doorstep - selling into 'other regions'By Rob(Rob) I only touched lightly on the 'other regions', the reason being that although I have worked extensively in Europe, there are many people more experienced in each country and separate region. The only country I have only ever lived in ...

.23A sort of letter to Joel Giambra before he leaves officeBy Christopher Byrd Part of what you spoke about was calling on Governor Spitzer to take on a bold initiative you are proposing to create a regionalized City of Greater Buffalo. I am guessing that this is some form of legacy fixing on your part. ...

.25Are we neanderthals? How can social software help?By sammy University departments are trapped inside their disciplines and find cross disciplinary work very challenging. Yet we know that the breakout in human potential came as a result of using complex language to look across boundaries. ...

.26Targeting Your Press Release With Google TrendsBy Stephen Peron The next time you get to the MSA field when submitting your press release and it sayss "Your release is currently targeting All Regions/International and the following Cities / MSAs:" take your top keyword or keyword term and use Google ...

.27Word of Mouth WebsiteBy Jethro(jean) It is total regionally focused, (in fact has a South and North Brisbane site.) with over 300 categories for people to comment on. You can check it out at www.womf.com. We are looking for local well connected bloggers to start some viral

.28 Toyota Launches Three-Year Study of Prius Plug-In With UC ResearchBy http-//www-autosavant-net UC Irvine will concentrate on technical issues, such as how much electricity will be taken from the regional power grid as thousands of hybrid owners plug in."Using real-world settings, we will begin to answer some of these open ...

.31Globalization? Now it's Regionalization.By Stanislav(Stanislav) There are two other trends that are equally putting pressure for regionalization. The first of these mega, world trends, is the obvious price increase in oil and thus fuel oil used for sea bound transportation. As prices increase in the ...

By Chris Mooney ...the projected regional warming and consequent increase in wildfire activity in the western United States is likely to magnify the threats to human communities and ecosystems, and substantially increase the management challenges in ...

Other menu sections available from this link include: regions, regional, regional community, region, Regional Council, regional developmentand other search terms. They can be sorted by date or relevance. These are among the 50 search terms I use to produce this newsletter.

My name is Tom Christoffel. I've worked in the field of intergovernmental cooperation since 1973. As a consequence, "I see regions work." Regional Community Development News is published weekly based on news reports as of Wednesday.

Making visible analysis and actions at multi-jurisdictional regional scales is its purpose. "Think globally, act locally" was innovative in its time. Today the local scale is often too small to address today's needs and opportunities. "Think local planet, act regionally, " is my candidate paradigm. (No one said we're only allowed one paradigm.)

We can see that “regional communities” are organized locally and now act both to avoid tragedy in the commons and gain benefits. An effective multi-jurisdictional regional community has DNA: it is geographically Defined; has a common Name and its Alignment is inclusive of smaller communities and participatory in larger communities. So, by scanning this compilation, reading articles and checking organizations - you too will be able to see the regional communities that already exist.

News references are found using the Google News search service. Media article links are “fair use” to transform globally scattered reports to make regional approaches visible. Links go to the publisher and do not compete with it. Such publishers are likely to have related stories and thus be seen by new customers. “Regional” is an emerging news category. There is no charge for this service and no profit is made from its use, though any user can become more aware of the topic itself.

The system is based on a geocode scheme set up for earth that focuses on established political boundaries as a basis for regional grouping of nations, states and localities. It is decimal system based to take advantage of the sort criteria for numbers in computers. It utilized the Sector Group and Region codes of the United Nations and ISO. Geographic information system technology does not solve the problem, but its tools can be used with the geocodes.

The geocode system effectively organizes Wikipedia entries as a library management and the geocodes can be used for data aggregation. This has been developed under a Creative Commons license and would benefit from a global network implementation where local users cooperatively related subnational geographic regions and component political geography.

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Earth ( we know its a spherical whole)

Humanity's Local Planet

Universe Man at the Boundary

Local Planet - Regional Space

Our Local Planet has systems of Political Geographies which combine as Regional/Greater Communities

Universe Man's place on earth is local and regional silmultaneously depending upon the system of regions, sub-regions of the planet as local wholes: continents, nations, states, provinces, districts, counties, shires, municipalities. etc., which have local regions within and between them which are capable of being greater communities at many scales.

Based on my experience as a regional planner and agency director, 1973 -2008, and in recognition of emerging "regional communities," I developed three thoughts about community that relate to the challenge of working across-boundaries as greater or regional communities. The thoughts/theses apply for communities at the scale of bonding or bridging social capital as defined by Robert D. Putnam, which is alternately local or regional. (link below)

As of 2011, considering the global financial crisis brought about by pursuit of the "profit motive," it struck me that this has come to dominate modern life. This is a relatively new invention of civilization and wasn't a concern for most of the time that homo sapiens has been on the planet.

The three thoughts below that had emerged in my experience of working on regional cooperation now represent what I now posit as the "community motive." Concern about "profit" can emerge within an established community over time, but, to my mind the "profit motive" does not exist in the wild.

1) Community precedes cooperation.2) Community is how life solves all problems.3) Security is the primary purpose of community.

These three thoughts, theses if you will, are the basis of the "community motive." Following is some exposition about each one.

As I see it, security has always been the priority for humans since the plains of Africa. That's why communities first seek to establish defensible boundaries. After the basics are in place, security focus shifts to the social and economic. Boundaries work like the membrane in the osmosis experiment most of us have seen in a science class. The membrane is a filter that lets the good things pass through, but keeps unwanted things out. (Osmosis -YouTube - 45 sec.)

The evolved political boundaries of today have consequence. The rules change when you cross them. Though marked on the ground and fortified in some instances, they are conceptual, as pictured above, with Universe Man. The boundary divides the space between local, that within, and regional, everything outside, as labeled in the second panel. The third panel repeats the image within, to show, without graphic elegance, that the land on which Universe Man sits is regional at another scale, as determined by other boundaries, and another area that's local. A territory is both local and regional, depending upon the perspective.

Communities of communities, “regional communities” are greater communities organized to solve a problem, be it managing a watershed, strengthening an economic cluster or ensuring peer competition for school sports. Regional boundaries can be imposed for administrative purposes within states, but for these to be a basis for effective cooperation, a greater community sense is needed for that geography among the people. This is true for multi-state and multi-national regional communities as well. The leaders with such a vision can build a regional community by finding that which is already in place.

This is not to suggest that community is easy to build in order to solve problems. In a crisis, humans of any culture, belief or politics can quickly come together and self-organize to save themselves and others. It was the on-the- ground response to the 9/11 attacks that demonstrated to me the deep responsiveness of human community, as well as the fundamental importance of security. Community is how humans have always survived. This, I think, extends to all life forms.